A common problem in painting is that you can get too fixed in subject, style and process. Experimentation is always good to keep from getting into that rut. Another thing that you can do is switch mediums.

Every few years I take a break from watercolor painting and switch to oil painting. The process of painting in oils is the opposite of painting in watercolor (paint light to dark in watercolor and paint dark to light in oil painting) which forces me to think about what I am doing. 

Now it is time to switch back to watercolor painting and thinking light to dark once again.
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Because of the pandemic, I had much more time to paint. These are the oil paintings that I completed over the past three months. 

Near the finish line, I made one last check on all of the values, colors, temperature, intensity and textures.

Completing the painting is attending to the the details–such as adding more rigging to the sails and more detail to the items on the deck of the ship. Done.

The next painting in the planning stages will be my favorite subject–a waterfall.

In this stage of the painting I added more of the rigging in the ship. Again, the drying time is critical in oil painting. Most of the rigging is a dark value which will dry faster than the light values in the background.

​Once the rigging was dry, I finished painting the water behind the ship.

I added color in the foreground water to create more movement. Water is relatively "soft" and  should have soft edges. Because that area was not yet dry, it was easy to blend, achieving the desired effect.

I also altered the color of the reflections on the ship to be consistent with the adjustment in the color of the water.
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​The next and final step will be to refine the painting, and add a few last details.

As mentioned in the previous step, I concentrated on the water. Why did I make the the temperature of the water warmer in the background instead of cooler, as might be expected? It was important to unify the water with the warm colors in the ship.
 
​Artists have many tools that enable them to create illusions in a painting. To create depth on a two dimensional surface, you can utilize linear perspective, temperature, contrast of value, intensity of color and detail. These are all ways to make objects or areas recede or come forward.

In the images below, #1 shows a warm and cool rectangle. You should perceive the warmer one as being closer to you.

The easiest way to make the warmer color appear to be further back, is overlapping, as illustrated in #2. The blue rectangle is obviously in front of the red rectangle.

Or, as in #3, you can make the warmer rectangle less intense or grayer. More intense colors are perceived to be closer to you.
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And #4, contrast of value. Objects that are more contrasting, light against dark, appear closer.

There are not too many dark values in this composition, but it was important to establish the darks in the water, in the interior of the ship, and in the rowboat.

The biggest challenge was the water. This is a horizontal plane and to make it look horizontal,  I needed to adjust the value from darker to lighter as I painted from foreground to background. The change of value needed to be about 15 percent. Too much of a change would make it look like it is an inclined plane, and too little would make it look like a vertical plane.

At the same time, I wanted the temperature to be warmer in the background–which seems contrary, because warm colors tend to be perceived closer to the viewer, with cooler colors in the distance.  I will talk about that in the next step.

In this step I focused on establishing the major elements of the composition–making sure that the proportions and drawing of the ship and rowboat were correct before blocking in the larger negative shapes of the water.
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Because the larger areas are lighter in value, I had to add some white paint to my colors. The added white does not dry as quickly, which slows down the process. 

​Adding light blue in the water itself was not a problem because it will be blended, creating softer edges on a later step.

Waiting for areas to dry gave me more time to establish some of the darker values in the ship and the rowboat. 

Next,  I began to focus on the larger area of the water.

With the pandemic still raging, I have more time to paint. Every so often I switch from my traditional watercolors to painting in oils. Because it is so different than my usual medium, it makes me concentrate more on what I am doing.
The procedure of painting light to dark in watercolor is the opposite with oil paint. I need to switch my brain into reverse to paint dark to light.

Several years ago, when the tall ships came to Chicago, I went to see them and took several photographs, one of which is below. The subject is actually one that I tried unsuccessfully to paint in watercolors. 
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​I decided on a rather large format -22'x28" on canvas.

The first step in any medium is the drawing.  With oil, I prefer to draw with the brush instead of using charcoal. I chose Indian red with turpentine for the drawing because it's a pigment that dries quickly, and allows me to start the painting within a few minutes.

The advantage of oil paints is that they dry very slowly which allows me to make corrections fairly easily. The disadvantage is that they dry very slowly! Unlike watercolor painting, where a layer dries quickly, waiting for a layer of oil paint to dry before putting down another layer takes too much time. I need another option.

Alla Prima (all at once) is my choice. If I paint thin to thick, the thinner paint will dry more quickly, allowing me to continue painting into wet paint.
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​Wish me luck! Steps to follow. 

I always find that the most difficult part of a painting is the details. How much do I add,  and where do I add to be most effective? If the pattern is good, the details should just enhance the pattern.

Here you can see the light, middle and dark pattern. I can easily add darker values and some lighter values by lifting. I mentioned lifting in my previous blog. Adding details to any of the areas of value should not change the shape or size of that area. 

If I add details in the dark areas, I want to keep them as a dark. And the same for the lights and middle values. If I don't do that then it will change that area and change the pattern.
If I find at this stage of the painting that the pattern could be improved, then I can make that adjustment by changing the pattern with details.

Most of the details were added to the center of interest with weeds, and fallen branches carried downstream. I added more dark values to the middle ground snow to give it more form, and finally adjusted some of the edges to the rocks and water in the foreground. As I mention in previous blogs, remember that you are finished when you are sure that there is nothing left to be adjusted. This painting is finished.

The last large area to be painted is the snow in the middle and background.

By adding more rocks around the fallen log, I can bring more interest to that area. While it was wet, I used a sharp blade to scratch some grasses to  add even more detail. 

The first thing that the viewer sees in any painting is the pattern. The areas of light, middle and dark values are the key to making any painting successful.
The best pattern will incorporate a variety of sizes and shapes. The pattern of each of the values should also connect visually or physically.

I chose a middle value for the rocks. With the pattern in mind, I wanted the rocks to connect with the values in both the water and the ice in the foreground. The shapes of the pattern also create movement. The light snow is a triangular shape that is pointing from the upper left corner down to the foreground to connect with the lights in the center of interest.

Happy with the pattern, all that is left is deciding how much and where to put any details.

In this step, I concentrated on the foreground. Painting up to the edge that I left in the previous step creates some hard edges where the water meets the snow.

Newly fallen snow will have soft edges. Ice generally has harder edges. I will leave these hard edges until I paint the "softer" snow in the middle and background, then adjust as needed. 

I want the water to be dark, but not as dark as the darks in the background. I made the color more intense to make the water appear to come forward, by using a combination of Phthalocyanine Blue and Manganese Blue. Manganese Blue is the coolest blue.

Ice traps the cool light inside its crystalline structure.  If you've seen icebergs in person, you will notice how blue they are.
​The balancing act here is to get the "coldness" of the ice, yet also to make this area come forward. The intensity of color should solve that problem.

​This step establishes the basic pattern of the light, middle and dark areas of value. Getting that correct is the key to a successful painting.

The next step will concentrate on the still large light area of the snow.